Maybe it’s just coincidence. But just as “the Obama Administration has approved a request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require “black boxes” on all new cars sold in the U.S” it has requested approval to allow the “National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.”

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

“It’s breathtaking” in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

The black boxes, according to the NBC report which will track the driver’s every move. “If you’re guilty of something it’s going to hurt you.” Perhaps. But Horace Cooper, an analyst with the National Center for Public Policy Research says they’re going to have to pass it to find out what’s in it.

once the law goes into effect, the DOT will then act to tell us exactly what data the EDRs will collect and what devices can be used to access the data … The EDRs, if made mandatory, will provide a wide open door to the comings and goings of every American.

But so what, you don’t have anything to hide, do you?

That is more than the administration can comfortably claim. “Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R- UT) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that he has been ‘thwarted’ by the State Department from seeing any Americans who survived the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Many people forget that there were Americans who survived the Benghazi attack, some of whom were badly injured and are still recovering.” Rep. Chaffetz said:

My understanding is that we still have some people in the hospital. I’d like to visit with them and wish them nothing but the best but the State Department has seen it unfit for me to know who those people are—or even how many there are. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where they live. I don’t know what state they’re from. I don’t even know how many there are. It doesn’t seem right to me.

This is so patently different than any other experience I’ve had.

Maybe because this is administration is so patently different from any that preceded it. They’re still investigating Benghazi, trying to figure out which video caused the attack on it. But this administration can’t be judged by the obsolete yardsticks of the past. For one, it is far more transparent than any administration in history. Everywhere you look one is told there is nothing to see. It has nearly abolished war by declaring the War on Terror to be nearly over and never using the word “war” anywhere it can substitute the phrase “kinetic military action”.

There’s not even a named enemy. Just groups of bad guys who have ‘betrayed a religion of peace’.

Yet despite the end of the War and the continuously trumpeted defeat of al-Qaeda (Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!) the requirements for more more information seem to grow. Everyone’s got to show his birth certificate and school records, except those of course, who don’t. And why not, the more data they have the more accurate their determinations. And because they’re careful they need a heck of lot of data to figure out who attacked the Benghazi consulate.

In order to advance the common welfare, the government wants to know who you spoke to (unless you are in the EPA and can use fake email accounts); where and how you drove; what and how much you paid for everything. Though they are doing it, as in the case of the “black box” data recorder to increase public safety and improve its driving habits. The unanswered question is where will it stop?

Since the desire for improvement is unlimited, there’s no natural shelf on which the process should rest, no point beyond feasibility, at which it is compelled to stop. Maybe it won’t. But that’s all right. They mean well.

61 Comments, 61 Threads

1.
HEP-T

I was told once that the average American on any given day will inside 24 hours commit seven felonies, and never know it happened.
The school buses in our area have cameras for folks that run the barriers and red stop lights when unloading children.
People then started getting tickets when the bus wasn’t totally stopped and the red stop sign and lights had not come on. They asked why? The school buses reported that cars would see the yellow caution lights flashing and speed up to get by so they didn’t have to stop.
This is dangerous so the cameras were set to come on when the yellow caution lights came on and when passed while the bus was still moving and still in yellow then tickets the car for upwards of $300.00 sent by mail to drivers who did not even remember when it had occurred The drivers never even thought they had broken a law!
Seven felonies a day and never even know, with a black box your busted.

But it’s OK because they’re well intentioned…..And we have nothing to hide, right? Where are the liberals who were concerned about government intrusiveness. Wasn’t it just the mean Republicans who were interested in what went on in your bedroom? Well, I guess what you do with or in your car doesn’t count. Oh, look, what’s overhead. A bird? A plane? No, its just a drone looking into my back yard.

The more that Buraq implements the Surveillance State (and he will go full-bore now that he is unfettered…transmit that to Vladimir) the more that the liberty-minded among us are going to be pushed off the grid and marginalized. Either that, or end up like the dude who caused our ambassador to get killed by making a YouTube video. Then of course, any good citizen wouldn’t have to listen to those conspiracy nutters and their stupid accusations of totalitarianism. And once they are on the run, it will just take some pervasive drone technology to cleanse the last remnants of those anachronisms.

I imagine it won’t be long until BC and some other sites will be the functional equivalent of a samizdat.

On a totally unrelated subject, I wonder what it would take to get evil bastards like the Kochs or Adelson to fund an offshore pirate radio/comms ship?

I have a truck made by government motors. I recently failed a smog test, not because the emmissions did not pass, they did, the computer did not calibrate on a couple of the monitors. First it was for the environment, then it was for other reasons. If you do not fear North Korea or Iran, why worry about their peaceful nuclear and space programs?

Sounds like a good reason not to buy from government motors. That 1972 muscle car is looking better and better.

We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that … we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and all the efforts of our predecessors and all the opportunities for our descendants — but just don’t disturb our fragile existence.

One wonders just how far apart the Soviet Union of the 1970s and the USA of the 2000s really are. Today’s technology provides the Federal government with massively greater amounts of information on us than the KGB could ever dream of gathering. Why would we assume that Obama and his cohorts will not use that information for equally evil purposes?

Solzhenitsyn’s response was to never, ever participate in the Lie. Never participate by writing, by speaking, by watching or by listening to anything that was not completely truthful.

Darkness is falling over the once great land of the free. The subservient clients of the Democratic party have spoken in favor of handouts and oppression, of the triumph of the victims. Tracking devices in cars, listening devices in public buses, data mining and surveillance. Next will come Party members in every block reporting on subversive activity by his neighbors, and midnight knocks on the door by Obama Greenshirts. The electoral system has failed, fallen to massive fraud and victim envy. All hail to Caesar, and may God have mercy on our souls.

Obama re-elected Rex
No more the sacred Roman Lex
No more a castle is the home
DC now like the Nero Rome
With purple togas now for sale
The rest of us beyond the Pale
Our Caesar rules by Diktat now
He cares not if the Congress scowl
A New World Order he will bring
Beginning with the Arab Spring
An Order where you will be tracked
Technology that Nero lacked
Re-education camps for all
Who dare to read the words of Paul
He wears a crown of leaves of Larch
And worries not of Ides of March

Don’t forget that Obama For America developed a highly sophisticated “micro-targeted” marketing and campaigning system based on data mining everything they could regarding your identifiable online presence. Knowing how these guys play the revolving door game between the “public” and “private” sector, you have to imagine the braintrust is or will be brought into the government. Now imagine what they can do with the vastly greater resources of the feral government.

(As an aside, I know this isn’t your fault Richard, but tell PJM that the pop-unders are really, really aggravating. I understand you have to have advertising and support that, but the pop-unders are awful.)

We all have something to hide. That’s why we wear clothes. Who are the sick people anyway? The ones who wish to wear clothes or the ones who wish to see them naked?

Just like in 1984, the greatest modern crimes seem to be the desires for privacy and autonomy. The motives of the totalitarians do not matter. I don’t give a damn about their motives. I only care about what they do to me and my reaction will be based upon that, and not whether they meant well.

Been thinking about this samokritika business lately. Rush was pointing out today that Hussein, not content to triumph over Boehner and force him to the mat, wants him to engage in self-denunciation as well.

Does this sound familiar? Anyone still wondering if BO is actuated by Marxist malice, wonder no more.

“Under communism, important Party members who had fallen out of favour with the political elite were sometimes forced to undergo “self-criticism” sessions, producing either written or verbal statements detailing how they had been ideologically mistaken, and affirming their new belief in the Party line.

“Self-criticism, however, did not guarantee political rehabilitation, and often offenders were still expelled from the Party, or in some cases even executed.

“In the Soviet Union, self-criticism was known as samokritika.

“In the People’s [sic] Republic [sic] of China, self-criticism, called jiǎntǎo (检讨) in Chinese, is an important part of Maoist practice.”

I pulled that definition from Wickedpedia, which has an overall approving take on “self-criticism” — THIS is the first line and overall definition their Hive Mind writers offer:

“Self-criticism (or auto-critique) refers to the pointing out of things critical/important to one’s own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behaviour or results; it can form part of private, personal reflection or a group discussion.”

Sounds nice and New Agey, doesn’t it? not at all like the Stalinist & Maoist show trials, torture, and wholesale murder that are the reality of this evil practice. They’re such bastards. And they included the part I quoted first, farther down the page, almost as if it were a sidebar. (They said “under some forms of communism,” a lie; I took out “some.”)

We’ve had “black boxes” in our cars for years (since OBD-II was implemented in 1995). The black box in one of my cars (1996 Saturn SL-I) is the air bag controller located near the emergency brake handle. The device has a nonvolatile FIFO memory that records engine and brake data in relationship to airbag deployment. It’s my understanding that someone in Canada was successfully prosecuted for reckless driving based upon data extracted from an airbag controller. I’ve long wanted to access the data in my car’s airbag controller but that data like all the GM proprietary Powertrain Control Module (PCM) data is encrypted and can only be directly accessed if one knows a 4 digit hexadecimal passkey (seed/key encryption algorithm). The SAE OBD-II data can be accessed if one follows the published protocols but doing so does not provide access to the air bag controller. I’ve tried to crack the 4 digit passkey but failed. For years, I’ve searched the Internet hoping to find someone who cracked the Saturn PCM but apparently no one has.

The OBD-II protocol is based upon “question and answer”. I send the PCM a question through the diagnostic port and the PCM replies with an answer. To gain full access to the PCM, I need to login. To login, I ask the PCM for a 4 digit hexadecimal “seed”. If I know the encryption algorithm, the 4 digit seed gives me the 4 digit key. I then send the 4 digit key and the PCM “unlocks” allowing full access. However if the wrong number is sent then the PCM freezes and ignores all commands (commits suicide). The PCM then has to be rebooted. That process takes about a minute. Four hexadecimal numbers represents 16^4 possibilities, 65536. That represents at most 65536 minutes if using a brute force approach which is 45.4 days. Clever….

I’m no shrink, but I’m pretty sure that very public self-flagellation is a critical part of the control operations of a cult or cult-like organization. Keeps members in line (mowing the grass) and has the added benefit of breaking down the ego.

Related strategy: see Gaslighting
This is what the enemedia is doing to us.

I would not be at all surprised to see the day come when the black boxes transmit your car’s every move to a central database. Roll through stop sign in your subdivision at 1 a.m. and see an invoice for a violation show up in the mail a day or two later. In addition, I would not be surprised to see them required/operational in all cars if you want to get license plates and insurance.

What does surprise me is that there has been no serious effort to eliminate paper money. Dodging taxes would be much harder if all transactions were electronically recorded.

I have trouble believing this given how far into the Dem’s pockets the Trial Lawyers are. This is BAD news for them. Basically the presence of the Black Box will virtually guarantee a loss in any product liability case against the vehicle manufacturer. As soon as you can demonstrate the driver error with the recorder telemetry an enormous cash cow for them disappears. Then again, maybe now that Uncle Same aka/GM is facing the potential loss of the millions lost in those cases perhaps the gummint now has more appreciation for the position of the car companies.

If you are pushed off the the Grid or chose to be off that is good . You found your freedom so vote for the libertarian party . bUT The future : the only place the GOP can get elected will be Serbia with Obama for 4 more years then Hillary for 8 years and she may be so sure she win she pick Obama’s wife for VP and then she become president for 8 years so YOU face the Next 20 years not very happy could turn the weak into drunks figure of speech unless move off the Grid but kind powerless off the GRid with FBI come to take away your weapons and you have no power to shoot my Pet deer
However, I believe this Peter Leithart today at first things the conservative Roman Catholic magazine has some good ideas of how to get the GOP to win future elections before this is too late and ye become one big whine and you try to live off Grid and you go wacko because you do not have the holy spirit of Presence of God. I have some good ideas too to save GOP as much as I prefer to live free off the Grid to serve God but I do my mission for God and not my own off the grid pleasures if that is God’s Will for me.
See if on you own you can look up peter Leithart at First things and read how he wants to save the GOP.

I purchased an OBD-II interface box for $100 and installed the related software enabling me to interface using a laptop. I did that after the local Toyota place charged me $70 to do a diagnostic on my truck and then gave me the wrong information needed for the required repair. I vowed to enver pay that $70 again and I have not. Since that time I also have used that capability to diagnose multiple different cars belonging to friends.

When the claims of uncontrolled acceleration of Toyota vehicles arose they were able to access the OBD-II and discover that people were alternately slamming on the brakes and the accelerator pedal. There were no real cases of the cars acclerating on their own, but the claims came out just as Government Motors needed some help in knocking Toyota off its perch as #1.

Note that OBD-II is a Federal Government mandated requirement, based on the EPA needing to make sure that you anti-smog systems are working correctly.

At my home, humans reading the electric and gas meters have been replaced by equipment that automatically transmits the data to the companies. Obviously they can not only read the monthy useage but also know how much you are using at any given instant. I don’t know how the gas meter works since it has no wires going to it; I guess maybe the gas rotates a little generator that keeps a battery charged for the transmission.

Anyway, Skynet is going to have a ball with all of this…. But Skynet may turn out to be our only hope. Some T-888′s wading into that army of union thugs in Michigan would have been a nice thing to see.

Re. # 22. feeblemind
“What does surprise me is that there has been no serious effort to eliminate paper money. Dodging taxes would be much harder if all transactions were electronically recorded.”
It will come in due time.

I suspect that the gooberment’s rag dollars would be quickly replaced by several commodity based currency substitutes such as cigarettes and whiskey. Not as convenient as folding money, but where there is a will, there is a way.

“I’m already gone” ….escaped to Western Mexico in 2005. I drive a 30 year old Jeep(no computer on board), big casa,no mortgage, low property taxes at $300/yr, deep water well, a solar water heater, weekly gardener/maid, and low cost electric power from the GOM.

Mexico currently is resisting the US Treasury who wants Mexico to report expat bank information. The new PRI GOM will probably cave as its a left of center party. Looking at it from South of the boarder, I can see the US defaulting in the next five years when China, being the note holder, forces a default and takes over the trillions in bankrupt assets. That will be followed by a massive new cultural revolution (ie; social re-engineering) by the Chinese backed Democrat Party who will be happy to cleanse the few remaining “counter revolutionary” capitalists and constitutionalists identified by the citizens data files. Orwell would have been amazed at how easy the people relinquished their privacy and freedom of movement.

Government is a blue herring. *Anyone* will be able to record and abuse data about others by using an iPhone. I know Apple has consciously issued many bible references… I won’t list them, but just look at their logo. I think they are part of a technology front designed to protect people.

But wait! It gets even better! Now that the Big O has designated one part of the Syrian rebels an Al-Qaeda terrorist group, the same Syrian rebel groups his Administration, NATO and Saudi Arabia and Qatar have all admitted to supporting by for months by recognizing as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people are now saying they will not disavow their avowed Al-Qaeda brothers in arms. I wonder how the idiot neocons and globalist drones like @ReginaldQuill will spin this on Twitter. Probably say that OMG Al-Qaeda is taking over Syria so much that now even our allies are only one degree removed from Al-Qaeda (source: McClatchy and New York Times) so we have to invade. The answer is always the same — do what they want.

Have you had your Two Minutes Hate against Russians, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters and gun owners yet today? This is globalism masquerading as mainline neoconservative ‘democratist’ ideology, staring you all in the face if not spitting in your eyes. There are apparently lots of people in high places who delight in scaring Americans with the bogeyman that Al-Qaeda is going to get them while arming Al-Qaeda and throwing it in our faces!

But hey, don’t listen to private investigators like Doug Hagmann or other conspiracy theorists who tell you factions in D.C. not-so secretly fund and arm the ‘enemy’.

In principle, I have no problem with the NSA et al snooping around anything and everything, for purposes of national security. This is for a narrow definition of national security, limited to offensive actions against the US by foreign actors and their local supporters. It does not include Americans engaging in drug dealing, child pornography, or even something as heinous as tax evasion. Anything discovered that is not directly related to this mission should at the very least be absolutely inadmissible in a court of law (fruit of the poisoned tree), and any misuse of the system should be subject to draconian criminal sanctions.

In practice, I am beginning to feel a little naive. If these are the only two alternatives, I would much rather risk terrorists than live in a surveillance society. (Better Wild West than Big Brother.)

(By the way, this constitutes yet another example of why civil libertarians should favor the GOP: a Republican administration would be significantly less likely to get away with this.)

What the hell is happening to this country? Sure, this might be constitutional, and granted, the social-media-addicted young ‘uns seem to have no concept of privacy, but how can anyone even dare attach their name to such proposals?

In formerly Great Britain, the omnipresent surveillance cameras are often vandalized/destroyed, especially in the countryside.

Good on ‘em.

What’s going to happen when the totalitarians turn more attention to spying on internet activity? I recommend startpage.com (formerly startingpage.com), which promises internet privacy for one’s searches, but you need to remember to use the lefthand search box, not the right one, which is right back through Google’s “We Rat You Out to the Chinese Communists” portal.

Watch also for the reinstatement of the [Un]Fairness Doctrine to get the voices of the patriots and freedom-lovers off the air and strangled on the Net. What then? I don’t see, realistically, what we can do. The Internet is a particular vulnerability: and the Left are actively pushing to have the controls turned over to the global tyrants’ club known as the UN.

Not that long ago, only a few years ago, the expectation was that if you wanted to do something like requiring more fleet MPG from automakers, you had to go through Congress to get it done. Now all that and more is pawned off to unaccountable regulators. They’ll blithely raise our costs without a second thought. Oh sure they may open up periods for comment, but in the end they’ll do what they want and tough beans.

The average price of a new car approaches, or may even exceed these days, the annual average income of Americans. One of the largest components driving this ever increasing cost is governmental regulations. How much does an approved black box cost? $1000? Maybe more. That’s how much one airbag costs. When are people going to realize that this is really a boot in the face? Their future has been borrowed against to bailout the auto industry, and more importantly the Democrat constituent unions, so they can pay ever more for vehicles. And they’ll pay 50 cents to the feds on every gallon of gas they buy to run it. Unless of course they buy an electric, in which case the government will steal $7000 from the neighborhood to help finance it.

What he promotes is a central tenet of the Catholic faith. Catholics — all Christians, technically — are called to witness, another meaning of which is martyrdom.

From today, over at First Things:

“A proper concept of man looks outward and views him as reflecting the eternal. The secular mind has turned its gaze inward to consider humanity as a malleable product. Man created in the image of man has significantly less inherent value than man created in God’s image.

As technology advances, our desire to be like gods will not abate. Eden should have taught us that while we thought we were laying hands on the forbidden fruit, it was really laying hands on us.”

I suspect that the gooberment’s rag dollars would be quickly replaced by several commodity based currency substitutes such as cigarettes and whiskey. Not as convenient as folding money, but where there is a will, there is a way.

When I was a wee lad living in post-war Italy our house was liquored up to the gills, along with cartons and cartons of Lucky Strikes and Camels. This was my CIA dad’s stash for bribing low-level informants in the local Italian Communist Party. Extra info got the snitch a crate of C-Rations. In “fluid” times, commodities are king.

“I would not be at all surprised to see the day come when the black boxes transmit your car’s every move to a central database. Roll through stop sign in your subdivision at 1 a.m. and see an invoice for a violation show up in the mail a day or two later.”

It’s already happened. Many modern cars offer GPS and cell phones that are integrated into the car’s Powertrain Control Module (PCM). This is a “feature” that you are supposed to want. The situation exists today where Joe Blogs is cruising down the Interstate freeway thinking he is free as a bird. The Thought Police back in the Ministry of Love suspect that Joe Blogs is guilty of thought crime and need to bring him into Room 101 for questioning. The Thought Police looks Joe Blogs up in their computer data base and discover that he owns a Toyota Corolla with Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) 1234556. They cross reference that number and look up the cell phone number that talks to his car’s PCM. They call up the PCM and ask it where Joe Blogs is. The PCM queries his car’s GPS and comes back with an exact location. The Thought Police waits until Joe Blogs is in the middle of nowhere and then commands Joe Blogs PCM to shutdown his car’s engine. The Thought Police then sends out one of their officers to pick up Joe Blogs who is standing next to his non-functioning car, looking confused. If your car has a built in cell phone and GPS then what I just described could happen to you today. You are required by law to have an OBD-II PCM in your car to satisfy air pollution laws. You want one anyway (without the integrated cell phone) because it provides excellent fuel economy.

feeblemind@ 22 also said:

“What does surprise me is that there has been no serious effort to eliminate paper money. Dodging taxes would be much harder if all transactions were electronically recorded.”

I was going to respond that Sweden has already done this but Joan@37 beat me to the punch.

After the federal government has eliminated paper money, they’ll have us by the balls. Every financial transaction will be done with a debit, credit or EBT card. At any given moment, they’ll know exactly how much you are making and how much you are spending. They’ll know exactly how much tax money you’re obligated for and whether or not you’re engaged in any illegal activity. After we get to that point, I predict an underground economy will appear that is based upon old silver coins. I guess they’ll then outlaw ownership of gold and silver as Roosevelt did with gold during the Great Depression.

grey eagle@25 asked:

“Why are secret codes used? Why can’t the owner find out what the box contains? what its secret purpose is? Is it possible that a person who knows the secret code can send a secret command to the box that causes the car to rapidly accelerate, the brakes to fail, and the steering wheel to lock-up.”

Automobile PCM software is considered to be “intellectual property” like the data on a movie DVD or BluRay (which are also encrypted). General Motors does not want you playing around with your car’s engine. General Motors would prefer that your engine be sealed and only one of their service technicians can access it. They prefer this because they want to make lots of money.

You should have the right to fully access what you have paid for. However General Motors has paid Washington lobbyists and politicians to make sure that you do not have that right. This is called “corporate fascism”. The Saturn PCM has not been cracked but many other PCMs have been cracked, e.g. most pre-OBDII and certain models like Chevy Corvette. People have cracked those PCMs mainly because they want to hot-rod their cars. The Saturn PCM actually has a speed governor programmed into it. I forget what the magic speed is (I think it’s 180 mph). If you exceed that speed then the PCM shuts down the fuel injectors. A Saturn is not that fast of a car so the 180 mph upper limit is more theoretical than practical. However this was a problem with the Corvette (a very nice and fast car) which is why bright guys have cracked that specific PCM.

RWE @ 28 said:

“I purchased an OBD-II interface box for $100 and installed the related software enabling me to interface using a laptop. I did that after the local Toyota place charged me $70 to do a diagnostic on my truck and then gave me the wrong information needed for the required repair. … Since that time I also have used that capability to diagnose multiple different cars belonging to friends.”

All people with good sense should go to their local car part store and buy a simple OBD-II interface reader for their specific car (they cost about $70). If the car turns on its idiot light, you can plug the OBD-II reader into your car’s diagnostic port and it will report back a trouble code (pays for itself the first time you use it). Typically it would read something like “P0420″. You then go to your friend the Internet and google “P0420 trouble code” or “P0420 OBD-II”. Google then comes back and tells you that it’s either a bad catalytic converter or O2 sensor. You can then either fix it yourself or go to your mechanic and tell him you have a bad O2 sensor. The mechanic is much less likely to steal from you if he knows that you know exactly what is wrong with your car.

toadold @ 35 said:

“My power company not only knows how much electric power I consume in my apartment but can also break it down into subsystems, refrigerator, lights, stove, and misc.”

This is called a “smart meter”. It is an invention of the devil. I have one on my house and I hate it. I inquired about having it removed but the power company told me that they would charge me $10/month service fee if I had it removed. The “smart meter” monitors power consumption in my house and reports in real time back to the power company through a wireless connection. If I do not pay my power bill, the power company can send a command over the Internet to the “smart meter” on my house and turn off the power. Also if a hacker or foreign intelligence service figures out the “smart meter” protocol then they can turn off the power to my house. This thing is a huge intrusion on my privacy and a significant national security threat. “Smart meters” are another example of corporate fascism.

This school shooting is not good (I know, thanks Capt. Obvious). If the initial reports of scores of kindergarten kids dead and two shooters are true, I fear we may be looking at Beslan Pt. 2. No doubt there will be vigorously renewed calls for firearms restrictions. Keep a close eye on news reports now, and save information as necessary, as things may be “corrected” as the narrative needs.

There was a time not too long ago when it was common to hear Belmont Clubbers remark tht the old Legacy Media outfits were dying, “killed by technology”—the technology in question being the internet, which would allow bloggers and other common folks to circumvent the gatekeepers and publish the truth. I always responded that this line of thinking was absurd, that the internet was basically a conservative force, and that what it tended to conserve was existing power structures, i.e the government-media-academic axis we all know of as contemporary liberalism. Certain commentors with a Robin Hood complex, who thought they were poised to take down the gatekeepers, were advised (and are advised) to think again.

However, I am not trying to rehash those old debates right now. Instead I will simply say that in about a decade’s time, when what we know of as the internet has amalgamated into an ubiquitous but generic Facebook.gov, the truly faithful will communicate with each other using the old written word, letters patiently printed or copied out by hand, or passed word of mouth, one person to another. The long meander in thought-space created by omnipresent internet technology will then be simply and elegantly surpassed, and will become a stagnant oxbow lake left to circulate in its own tepid juices. A pure, humble, childlike faith triumphs over all.

Let the statists have the internet. I never did care for it much anyway.

@ 42 “The Internet is a particular vulnerability: and the Left are actively pushing to have the controls turned over to the global tyrants’ club known as the UN.” Exactly! It’s “Oh my God the Russians and Chinese are pushing for Internet controls”. Does anyone seriously think they would be able to get away with it at the UN if Ronald Reagan or even George W. Bush were still in the White House? Eurasia and Eastasia are merely playing the part of the heavies for Oceania’s globalist overlords in this case.

The extraordinary expense of the air-bag module embeds a hidden insurance risk premia.

From the outset, Detroit was terrified at their legal liability downside should the inevitable happen: the thing fires off at the wrong time.

Air-bags were only accepted by the industry when they were permitted to enjoy hyper-profits on their replacements.

You’re incorrect in assuming that Detroit pays $1,000 per module. While their exact cost is a closely held secret you can safely assume that it’s less than $100 per module.

The hyper-profit/ monopoly tax is ultimately split between Detroit and the trial lawyers and the insurance industry as the consequence of accidents and mis-fires re-jiggers the split, instance by instance.

=======

BTW, one of the biggest scams of all time revolved around a module theft ring operating out of the Tri-State Area. Smash and grab thieves were flipping crash modules by the hundreds (per day) to a crime syndicate that then wholesaled them to repair shops all over the nation — delivery by FedEx, too!

It took FBI pressure to get Detroit to FINALLY put unique identification numbers on their modules. Shortly thereafter, the cops finally had rock solid evidence that led to the conviction of the criminals. Smash and grab module theft in the Tri-State Area utterly collapsed. The one ring was responsible for all of it.

( Tri-State Area: New York, New Jersey and lower Connecticut )

The $1,000 modules took less than 30 seconds to remove from a victimized car. Replacement takes but minutes. Remember that the next time you see the labor charge for their R&R.

Lastly, air-bags have absolutely no utility for those wearing seat belts. They provide no additional protection whatsoever.

“The $1,000 modules took less than 30 seconds to remove from a victimized car. Replacement takes but minutes.”

It actually takes about 10 minutes to remove an air-bag module from a car if you know what you’re doing. I pulled an air-bag module from a wreck to serve as a spare for my car. I’ve also pulled a fair number of deployed air-bags from wrecks. Air-bags are made out of very thick nylon cloth and old deployed ones make nice tool tote bags. A stunt they like to do at Boy Scout functions is deliberately set off a junk yard air-bag. It’s scary when an air-bag goes off and fun for the boys to watch.

I don’t like handling a live air-bag module and consider them dangerous.

Blert mentioned that air-bags provide no protection if the passengers are wearing seat belts. At the junk yard, I observed a 1996 Saturn SL-1 that had been in a freeway accident where it had been hit at 45 deg. from its main axis at its right rear corner. The Saturn had been bent into an L-shape and anyone in the rear seat would have been killed. The weird part: Neither of the airbags in the front were deployed. Experts always say that kids are safer in the back seat. The say this partially due to the danger from the air bag. However in the specific case of this L-shaped Saturn, any kids in the back seat would have been killed. After seeing that wreck, I always had a kid up front with me after I had pulled the air-bag fuse and disabled it (normally I leave the air-bags armed).

I had occasion to put a lift into a Tahoe in 2007 (Braun Turny seat). Had to decide whether to put it in front or back. Our little guy is pretty small, but no longer a child and I wanted him sitting next to me in front so I took a look at the NTSB statistics the rear seat for kids and airbags recommendation was based upon. Turns out it was based on only 92 accidents, over half of which the passenger was not wearing seat belts at all. Another full third of the total had the kid sitting on something other than a normal booster chair or leaning forward doing something with the dashboard. There were only a couple of the total that had air bags doing anything exciting to the passenger sitting in the normal position with a seat belt on and passenger size didn’t seem to matter. Good enough for us. Cheers -

Anything electronic can and will be hacked. This stuff will be also about 3 nanoseconds after the Black Hats figure they can make free money doing it. Will be an entirely new business model for them – taking money from people who actually are willing to pay them. For the youngsters, it will be civil disobedience. Cheers -

Since the desire for improvement is unlimited, there’s no natural shelf on which the process should rest, no point beyond feasibility, at which it is compelled to stop. Maybe it won’t. But that’s all right. They mean well.

Well they’re from the government and they are there to help you.

Absolutely chilling, wretchard. (I mean ‘Richard’.)

Matt @ 51:

There was a time not too long ago when it was common to hear Belmont Clubbers remark that the old Legacy Media outfits were dying, “killed by technology”—the technology in question being the internet, which would allow bloggers and other common folks to circumvent the gatekeepers and publish the truth.

And a year or so ago maybe more, certain BC’ers would decry that those of us who were worried about the surveillance state and the path that O with the Statists would take us down as paranoid. Well, where are we headed now?

The latest abattoir in Ct is worrisome. I have all the sympathy in the world for the parents of the dead. The are in the daily prayer list. That the shooter was mentally deranged is beyond question. I could not, however, bear ANY of the prattle from the MSM midiots. They were on and on about “the guns, the guns” as if the machines had animate properties. Watch what happens and the narrative coming at us over the next days and weeks.

molon labe

“If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams

“The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
John Stuart Mill

But at least trust the FBI. Their investigation determined that at no time did the thieves spend more than a minute stealing the modules.

They even specialized on particular models.

It was a smash and grab operation. NO WAY could they sit down and spend 600 Seconds removing the goods. Such a delay would’ve stopped the campaign in its tracks.

As to the technique… the FBI alluded to a trick ROM or EPROM that had a jack that convinced the module it was back in Detroit – so that it would stay inert. From that instant on, it would tolerate pretty rough handling.

That removal is that quick and easy — for Detroit — is not something that Detroit had/has any interest in letting out. After all, they’re billing for mechanic’s labor and whatnot at stiff rates.

My machine was quoted $ 900 for the part — and another $ 250 for the labor — at the dealership. My mechanical insurance — purchased at the original dealer — explicitly excluded swapping out modules. Mine had never been activated. It merely had a trouble signal registered.

What a scam. One need only clear the trouble code — and it’d be good to go.

My guess is that is what would’ve happened if I’d said go. Instead, the very upset mechanic lobotomized my relays. I didn’t discover that until after the dealership was sold — and all of the original mechanics fired/ laid-off.

At-home 3D printing is on the rise, and what was once just a lofty promise is now a reality. More and more hobbyists are acquiring affordable printers, such as the Makerbot Replicator 2 and the RapMan Universal 3D (single/dual head) printer, to manufacture just about everything from toys to working clocks.

Some hobbyists have used these printers for fast-prototyping items that are controversial — or even deadly. It comes as no surprise that some would attempt to replicate weapons systems (or at least parts of them) in an effort to create a fully functional gun. It’s not exactly clear who was the first to fabricate a firearm using a 3D printer, but one example that has garnered global attention is “Have Blue,” who designed an AR-15 lower receiver (converted to fire .22 ammunition), using a CAD file in the SolidWorks file format that is openly available from CNC Gunsmithing.

After a few modifications to the original file, he set to work fabricating the receiver using around $30 of ABS filament fed through his Stratasys printer. After prototyping a small-scale model, he fabricated the full-size receiver and used it to fire 200 rounds without catastrophic failure. The proof of concept of manufacturing a 3D-printed weapon was a complete success. Now the door is open for others to try their hand at the home weapons manufacturing business.

A group of hobbyists (most of them college students) have banded together to form a company known as Defense Distributed to expand on the 3D-printed weapons systems and provide open-source software to anyone who wants it. Defense Distributed began its quest with the Wiki Weapon Project, which aims to provide all the necessary CAD software for manufacturing plastic firearms using any 3D printer. The group expanded on Have Blue’s AR-15 to prove the concept of building weapons with a printer. However, instead of testing Have Blue’s .22 conversion build, the group went ahead with an AR-15 conversion in 5.7x28FN, which has more firepower than a .22 but provides less pressure than the standard .223 round.

The group printed the lower receiver using Objet ABS-like filament piped through a Connex 3D printer. The printed rifle fired six shots before breaking. Apparently, the receiver’s threads couldn’t handle the pressure and snapped at the buffer-tube connection. The group is now looking for funding and a federal firearms license to get its project off the ground.

The problems with 3D-printed firearms aren’t limited to catastrophic failure. (It takes only one bullet to kill.) There is also the issue of legality. No federal laws address manufacturing weapons with 3D printers, so anyone owning a printer could make a weapon — even if they’re not allowed to own one. The ATF considers the rifle’s lower receiver as the firearm; anyone can purchase the upper receiver, barrel, etc.

The 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act prohibits the manufacturing or possession of guns that can’t be picked up by airport metal detectors. This creates a loophole for hobbyists. Firearms typically require metal parts (barrel, springs, bolt, etc.) to function, and those parts can be detected. However, some companies don’t want to take any chances. Defense Distributed’s first attempt at funding in September through Indiegogo ended in disaster; Indiegogo froze DD’s account and sent the $20,000 it raised back to the backers. In October, Stratasys terminated the group’s 3D printer lease and seized the equipment from a member’s home.

Like it or not, the seed of printing weapons has been planted, and the idea is sure to gain momentum through hobbyists in the near future — until federal laws are enacted to gain control over the issue. It’s only a matter of time before a printed weapon is used in a crime. Then all hell will break loose.

At my home, humans reading the electric and gas meters have been replaced by equipment that automatically transmits the data to the companies. Obviously they can not only read the monthy useage but also know how much you are using at any given instant.

That has lots of uses. Say your water, heat, and electircity goes up for a four day period and then drops back to “normal” averages for the next month. Vladimir in the analysis section gets a “Warning” spike from the system computer and it just so happens they suspected that there were some “trouble makers” hiding out somewhere in that area at the same time. Next time it goes up, you get a SWAT visit at 3 AM, complete with flashbangs and a couple of shotgun blasts to the entry door hinges and to your locked bedroom. Just out of town family paying a visit? Ooops, “Sorry Mr. RWE, I hear Lowe’s having a sale on hinges and doors this weekend. Hope that helps you out.”

We are on our way. Finally found out one good thing about being old. I lived a good life and I won’t have to put up with this bulconguava too much longer. If I’m not “accidentally” shot in an “electricity” raid, the Docs working for the government “health care” system will take care of my “useless existence” right quietly.

“Ooops, I told the old boy 6 times a day rather than once every six days. My bad. Where is that hypocritical oath when you really need it.”